ROTH FAMILY FOUNDATION Music in America Imprint Michael P. Roth and Sukey Garcetti have endowed this imprint to honor the memory of their parents, Julia and Harry Roth, whose deep love of music they wish to share with others. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Music in America Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Sukey and Gil Garcetti, Michael P. Roth, and the Roth Family Foundation. At the Jazz Band Ball NEA Jazz Masters, 2004, left to right from back row: George Russell, Dave Brubeck; second row: David Baker, Percy Heath, Billy Taylor; third row: Nat Hentoff, Jim Hall, James Moody; fourth row: Jackie McLean, Chico Hamilton, Gerald Wilson, Jimmy Heath; fifth row: Ron Carter, Anita O’Day; sixth row: Randy Weston, Horace Silver; standing next to or in front of balustrade: Benny Golson, Hank Jones, Frank Foster (seated), Cecil Taylor, Roy Haynes, Clark Terry (seated), Louie Bellson, NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. Photograph by Tom Pich. At the Jazz Band Ball Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene Nat Hentoff Foreword by Lewis Porter UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2010 by Nat Hentoff Every effort has been made to identify the rightful copyright holders of material not specifically commissioned for use in this publication and to secure permission, where applicable, for reuse of all such material. Credit, if and as available, has been provided for all borrowed material in the credits section of the book. Errors or omissions in credit citations or failure to obtain permission if required by copyright law have been either unavoidable or unintentional. The author and publisher welcome any information that would allow them to correct future reprints. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hentoff, Nat. At the jazz band ball : sixty years on the jazz scene / Nat Hentoff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 - 0 - 520 - 26113 - 6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Music — History and criticism. 2. Jazz — History and criticism. I. Title. ML60.H4982 2010 781.6509 — dc22 2009038153 Manufactured in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on Natures Book, which contains 50% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48 – 1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). To the musicians who keep putting new life into mine, and to Mary Francis, but for whom this book would not have been born — and to her similarly extraordinary colleagues at University of California Press, who, in a Duke Ellington phrase, are also “beyond category” This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword by Lewis Porter xi Acknowledgments xvii Introduction 1 Part One What Am I Here For? The Rules of My Jazz Odyssey 1. Who Owns Jazz? 9 2. My Debt to Artie Shaw 11 3. The Family of Jazz 12 4. Beyond the Process 14 5. Playing Changes on Jazz Interviews 16 Part Two In the Presence of Ellington 6. Inside the Ellington Band 21 7. Duke Ellington’s Posthumous Revenge 23 8. Essentially Duke (and Wynton) 24 9. Ellington’s Band Is Heavenly in These “Live” Forties Recordings 26 Part Three Jazz Credentials 10. Is Jazz Black Music? 31 11. No One Else Sounded Like “Pee Wee” Russell 33 12. Just Call Him Thelonious 35 13. Remembering Dizzy 40 14. Oscar Peterson: A Jazz “Behemoth” Moves On 42 15. A Great Night in Providence for Jazz and Snow 43 16. The Perfect Jazz Club 45 17. Anita O’Day: The Life of a Music Legend 47 18. The Music of the 1930s Is Back in Full Swing 49 19. The Expansive Jazz Journey of Marian McPartland 52 20. Going Inside Jazz with Wynton 54 Part Four The Jazz Life On and Off the Road 21. Memories Are Made of This: A Conversation with Clark Terry 59 22. Man, I’m So Lucky to Be a Jazz Musician: Phil Woods 66 23. Conventional Unwisdom about Jazz 74 Part Five Who Is a Jazz Singer? 24. Are Krall and Monheit Jazz Singers? 79 25. Billie Holiday, Live: A Biography in Music 80 26. This Daughter of Jazz Is One Cool Cat 83 27. The Springtime of Frank Sinatra 85 28. Sinatra Sings in Vegas, and You Are There 87 29. She’s on the Road to Renown 89 30. Bing and Guests Swing on the Air 91 Part SiX The Life Force of the Music 31. The Joyous Power of Black Gospel Music 97 32. The Healing Power of Jazz 99 33. Old Country Jewish Blues and Ornette Coleman 101 34. The Jewish Soul of Willie “The Lion” Smith 103 Part Seven Finding the First Amendment Groove 3 5. Satchmo’s Rap Sheet 109 36. The Constitution of a Jazzman 111 37. How Jazz Helped Hasten the Civil Rights Movement 113 38. The Congressman from the Land of Jazz 117 39. Jazz Musicians in the Public Square 119 40. Quincy Jones — Past, Present and Future 121 Part Eight Roots 41. King Oliver in the Groove(s) 127 42. Giants at Play 129 43. Barrelhouse Chuck Goering Keeps the Blues Alive 131 44. Jazz’s History Is Living in Queens . 133 45. Uncovering Jazz Trails 136 46. Expanding the Map 138 Part Nine The Survivors 47. The Thoreau of Jazz 143 48. A Living Memory of Dr. Art 145 49. Barren Days 146 50. Keeping Jazz — and Its Musicians — Alive 148 51. In New Orleans, the Saints Are Marching In Again 150 52. The Beating Heart of Jazz 152 Part Ten The Regenerators 53. Bridging Generations 157 54. The Rebirth of the Hot Jazz Violin 159 55. The Newest Jazz Generation 161 56. Born in Israel 163 57. Theo Croker Arrives 164 58. The Ladies Who Swung the Band 167 59. Nineteen-Year-Old Saxophonist Verifies Future of Jazz 172 Part Eleven The Master Teachers 60. A Complete Jazzman 177 61. The Lifetime Teacher: Jon Faddis 178 62. A House of Swing — for All Ages 193 63. Inside the Jazz Experience: Ron Carter 196 64. These Little Kids Think Coltrane Is Cool 210 Epilogue: My Life Lessons from the Jazz “Souls on Fire” 213 Credits 223 Index 227 This page intentionally left blank Foreword If you’ve ever had the chance to speak with Nat Hentoff, you won’t be surprised to learn that he has a background in radio — he speaks clearly and decisively, with never an “um” or “uhh.” As he recounted in a 2007 interview with jazz musician and historian Loren Schoenberg: By luck I got into radio. I had worked in a candy store with a guy named Ed Blackman, who later became an announcer before he became a professor of reli- gion, and there was an opening at this radio station. I was a staff announcer. I also covered politics. But I got them to let me do a jazz program on time they couldn’t sell [i.e., when they had no sponsors]. That led to my inviting up [Duke] Ellington, Rex Stewart and all those people. [I] got to know them somewhat . It was called The Jazz Album. A lot of the tapes are now at the University of New Hampshire. A woman, Dorothy Cook, who came to live there, she and her husband had taped the shows.* Those taped shows must be a gold mine, and reading this collection gives one some of the flavor of what Nat has to offer as a jazz commentator. But before we say more about that, a little background on Nat’s life might be in order. Nat was born on June 10, 1925, in Boston, and, as he recounts in his memoir Boston Boy, his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, Simon Hentoff and Lena Katzenberg. His younger sister went to Girls’ Latin School. She’s now Janet Krauss, a professor at Fairfield University and a published poet. Nat came to New York in 1953 to work as the city’s editor of the jazz magazine Down Beat until 1957. He has been in Manhattan ever since. *See www.smithsonianjazz.org/oral_histories/pdf/Hentoff.pdf. xi xii Foreword His memoirs are continued, informally (as a collection of stories, rather than as a chronological account), in Boston Boy and Speaking Freely. As his devoted readers will know, Nat has led another career as a civil libertarian and political reporter. He received his B.A. with highest honors from Northeastern University and did graduate work at Harvard. In 1950, he was a Fulbright Fellow in Paris at the Sorbonne. He has won awards for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns, notably during his fifty-year tenure at theVillage Voice. In 1985, his alma mater, Northeastern University, awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Laws. We won’t list all of his many awards here, but Nat is rightly proud that in 1995 the National Press Foundation gave him their award for lifetime distin- guished contributions to journalism. It was Nat’s personal politics that got him into writing about the world of politics.